


Wild Geese

by Mad_Maudlin



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, GiveMartinHugs2k19, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Character Death, Implied Murder, fuck the lonely, spooky times on the kent downs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-14
Updated: 2019-07-14
Packaged: 2020-06-28 08:49:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19808851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mad_Maudlin/pseuds/Mad_Maudlin
Summary: You do not have to be good.You do not have to walk on your kneesfor a hundred miles through the desert repenting.You only have to let the soft animal of your bodylove what it loves.Martin stopped the Extinction, but he's still not done.





	Wild Geese

It took hours for Moorland House to finish burning. Martin watched the entire time. 

He thought he should feel worse about … well, it was murder, wasn't it? Even if they weren't human anymore. Even if they were trying to end the world. He wanted to feel worse about it, because he didn't want to get comfortable with this kind of violence. He mostly felt tired, though, a bone-deep exhaustion years in the making.

The house burned for hours, and the sun never moved behind the low, gray clouds. Because this wasn't over, yet. 

Eventually, when the last wall had collapsed and the flames died down to embers, Martin climbed to his feet. Even if he'd had keys to one of the cars in the drive, he wouldn't trust any of them to get him back to London. Even if his phone hadn't burned inside the house, he didn't think an Uber could find him here. 

He turned his back on the ashes and started walking. He walked for a long, long time. 

* * *

Keeping his head down, putting one foot in front of another — Martin was good at enduring.

Nobody knew he'd come to Kent with Peter. Well, Jon — that is, the Archivist might, but Martin no longer had any idea how much of Jon was left in him, whether he'd even care. The others would find the information he'd left them, documents and tapes and records, but they probably wouldn't even notice he'd gone. By the time they found out about the failed ritual, by the time they put two and two together—

Nobody was coming to save him, was the point. He was alone.

The downs had the exhausted look of late autumn, all bare branches and dry brown leaves waiting for winter to finally smother them. The path that lead from Moorland House kept twining up and down the hills, never finding its way to the main road; a little mist began to collect in the low spots. The heavy sky still had not darkened, though the burned-out shell of the house was long out of sight. 

He was forsaken, and it was only a matter of time before he was lost. 

He kept walking anyway. 

* * *

He walked through the rising fog and crunchy drifts of leaves. He felt blisters on his feet rise, and break, and sting, but he kept going. His mouth got dry, tongue sticking unpleasantly to his palate, and his stomach growled. 

Eventually he left the paved road, hoping that the dirt would be a bit more pleasant to walk on than the tarmac. It wasn't, but the moment it was out of sight the road was just gone, stolen away in mists. So he picked his way through the silent downs, just the crunch of his footsteps and breathing, trying not to stumble on the uneven turf.

It wasn't like he had a destination in mind. Even if he had, the mists would never let him reach it. Martin had no real hope of rescue, but he walked, because it gave him something to focus on. He walked because, if there _was_ any way home, it wasn't staying back at Moorland House to sulk. And he walked because he wouldn't give the Lonely the satisfaction of just laying down to die. 

* * *

(There was a way to save himself, more certain that blundering into the grey—)

(But no. He wouldn't give in to it. Even posthumously, he wouldn't give Peter the satisfaction.)

* * *

Time was squirrely in that gray facsimile of the downs, and the pearly sky unchanging, so Martin wasn't sure how long he managed to go before he stumbled the first time.

The second time, he lay on the ground a moment to catch his breath before he climbed to his feet. 

The third time — that should've been it, for poetic purposes, the third and final time. He pushed himself up on hands and knees and took deep breaths, trying to calm his throbbing, spinning head. Three times. Either he got up from this and got a happily ever after, or he didn't get up at all. 

He pulled himself up and almost fell right back down; was it hunger making him dizzy, or fatigue, or both? He leaned heavily against a fallen log, feeling every bruise and scrape and hour of walking. _Last time,_ he promised himself. _Either way, this is the last time._

He put one foot in front of the other. He kept going. 

And he didn't fall, the last time. He stopped to catch his breath next to a tree, legs shaking from exhaustion, and realized that he couldn't go on like this. It wasn't a matter of survival, it was a matter of choice. 

He slid to the ground below the tree, telling himself he was just going to rest for a bit. If he woke up, he'd keep going. If he didn't wake up...well, the Lonely was going to have him one way or another, and dying in his sleep wasn't the worst way to go.

He made himself as comfortable as he could against the tree, given the chill and the headache and the throbbing blisters on his feet. He tried, for the last time, to find the sun through the clouds.

Then he finally let his eyes fall shut.

* * *

He was cold when he woke up, and his head hurt more than ever. For a moment he wasn't sure if something was wrong with his eyes or the sky had finally gone dark. For a moment he wasn't sure what, besides the headache, had awakened him.

Then he saw a flicker of light through the coppiced trees, and heard voices for the first time in … hours? Days?

Martin pushed himself halfway up, stiff and dizzy, trying to orient towards the sounds. He was almost to his feet before it occurred to him that the voices might not be human. That the sort of things roaming the Lonely might not be things he wanted to meet. 

The torches were drawing closer, and he hesitated, torn between hope and hesitation..

"Martin?"

He knew that voice, and it pulled a wordless, involuntary noise from his chest. If this _was_ a trick of the Lonely, it was the cruelest thing it could've done.

"Martin!"

He managed just a few painful steps before he had to stop, and his mouth was too dry to speak. Did he want to speak, though? Was this even real?

Wouldn’t it be safer to just keep walking, and find his own way out?

"Martin — " The nearest beam of light flashed briefly in his eyes; then it angled away, and Jon was behind it. The Archivist. Whatever. "Martin, are you — I see you, but —"

Maybe it would be safer to turn around, but Martin was so very tired. 

He limped forward, into the light, and nearly stumbled again. But this time there was someone else to catch him: Jon met him halfway, dropping his torch to the ground to grab on with both hands and babble in his ear. "Oh — oh, Christ, Martin, I thought — it's all right, I've got you. Just — shit. It's all right. We found you."

(He didn't realize he was shaking until Jon's arms wrapped around him. He didn't realize he was gasping, sobbing, past the point of tears, until he pressed his face into Jon's neck and tried to breathe.)

For a moment they just stood there, clinging to one another, and then Jon took a shuffle-step backwards and tugged Martin with him. "Shh," he said, when Martin protested. "I know. I know you're tired, but you only need to come a bit further. Just back to the car. Then you can rest."

He was more than tired; he was _spent,_ too tired and too hungry and too weary in spirit. But he found it within himself to pull away, to push back, to look Jon in the eye. Because if this was a trick, some sort of Last Temptation of Martin Blackwood — 

But Jon looked just as spent as Martin felt, and his eyes caught the light from the fallen torch in ways that they really shouldn't. "Martin, please," he said softly, urgently, curling his fingers into Martin's jacket.

This wasn't over, not really. This might never be over. Weirdly, that was something he could trust.

"Okay," he croaked, and let Jon hold him. Let Jon guide him back in the direction he'd come. 

* * *

By the time the others made it back to the car, Martin was sat in the back with a bottle of water and a musty blanket. He leaned into Jon's shoulder as Jon rubbed his back, and they watched the sun come up together.

**Author's Note:**

> The summary (and the title) are from "Wild Geese" by Mary Oliver, because I officially lost my W. H. Auden privileges a while back.


End file.
